A Japanese school has received a $27,000 (Php 1.4M) water bill after a teacher left a tap open for months to fill a swimming pool for checking COVID-19 infections.
The teacher, who has not been identified, was in charge of pool maintenance and left the tap on from late June to early September last year thinking the constant flow of freshwater into the pool would keep it COVID free.
The pool’s water quality is managed via filtration and chlorination.
Local education board official Akira Kojiri said that the teacher thought that pouring new water in would prevent COVID.
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Other staff members occasionally noticed the running tap and turned it off, but the teacher would reportedly turn it back on.
An estimated 4,000 tonnes of excess water was wasted in just over two months which was enough to fill the pool 11 times over.
Local authorities in Yokosuka in central Japan’s Kanagawa prefecture asked the teacher and two other supervisors to pay half of the 3.5-million-yen (approximately $27,000) water bill.
